


Apologies Won't Solve It All (But It's A Good Place To Start)

by Alexdoesthings



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Angry Stiles, Apologies, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Established Derek Hale/Stiles Stilinski, Established Relationship, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-04
Updated: 2014-07-04
Packaged: 2018-02-07 11:59:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,560
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1898205
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Alexdoesthings/pseuds/Alexdoesthings
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Derek just wants to make things right but Stiles doesn't want anything to do with him right now.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Apologies Won't Solve It All (But It's A Good Place To Start)

**Author's Note:**

> I was having a conversation with someone about Malia climbing in through Stiles's window at night and it turned to how Derek would be a gentleman and try to use the door first. Then I just wanted them to be having a fight.
> 
> This is the result.

The doorbell rang. Its obnoxious tones reverberated through the house and up to Stiles’s bedroom. It shook him rudely from his focus on his history homework. He glanced behind himself at the open door to his bedroom, debating whether it was worth the effort to go check who it was. The sun had set but it wasn’t too late that the possibility of solicitors had vanished. He turned slowly back to his laptop, deciding to pretend he wasn’t home despite the lights being on.

He had barely returned his mind to the task at hand when whoever was at the door rapped on it several times in quick succession. He sighed agitatedly and stood up. He crossed to his window and looked out to see whose car was parked out front before he went to answer the door. He’d had enough unpleasant surprises lately and most of the people he cared to have in his house right now had a key or could knock on his window.

His blood started to boil as he spotted the familiar car parked out front. Standing next to it, looking up at him expectantly with his hands in his jacket pockets, was the driver, Derek Hale. Stiles yanked the window up with unnecessary force and leaned out, having long since taken the screen off the window.

“What the hell do you want,” Stiles yelled, much louder than was necessary considering the recipient of the message had superhuman hearing. Derek started to open his mouth to speak when Stiles cut him off with an agitated, “You know what? I don’t care. I don’t want to talk to you. So go skulk under someone else’s window.”

He punctuated his statement by slamming the window so hard he could swear he heard the wood groan in protest but he couldn’t care less. Derek heaved a sigh that seemed to take his whole body in his show of exasperation. Stiles had almost turned his back on the window when he saw Derek’s body tense. He’d seen that before, many times.

“Don’t you dare,” Stiles started to say, but it was too late. Derek had already leapt his way up the side of the house and was perched at Stiles’s window. He rapped two fingers against the glass and waited, patient.

Stiles glared at Derek through the glass for a few seconds debating. Then he decided if Derek wanted he was getting in anyway so he might as well make this fast. He yanked the bottom of the window up an inch and left Derek to do the rest.

“Why’d you bother ringing the doorbell then,” Stiles asked bitterly as he turned his back on the window and walked deeper into his room.

“It’s called being polite,” Derek replied coolly as he slipped easily past the frame.

“Oh he’s got manners,” Stiles mocked with as much sarcastic venom as he could put into his voice, “Guess you weren’t raised by wolves after all. Oh, wait.”

He turned back to glare at Derek, arms crossed defiantly over his chest. Derek did not rise to his bait and for some reason that made Stiles even angrier.

“We need to talk,” Derek said and his voice was mostly calm, every word perfectly annunciated as he met Stiles’s heated glare neutrally.

Stiles’s jaw clenched so hard he almost thought he would break his teeth. His fingernails cut sharply into his skin as he dug them into his arm to keep from launching himself at Derek. “Maybe you need to talk,” Stiles said, anger like molten magma rolling through his words “but I’m done talking to you.”

Derek looked hurt for a second but he covered it over as he composed himself and started saying, “Stiles, I’m--” but Stiles interrupted, shouting at him, “NO! I don’t want to hear it! I don’t care if you’re sorry, I don’t care about anything you have to say, get out of my house!” He finished it off with a wide, violent sweep of his arm that encompassed the two exits, the window and door.

He was shaking and his breathing was heavy as he glared at Derek. He didn’t care what Derek did as long as he was far, far away from Stiles.

Derek didn’t move for a few long seconds, his eyes darting between both of Stiles’s, assessing him. Then his eyes dropped and shifted to the open door. He started walking and Stiles hated that he could recognize all the signs of pain and defeat that Derek was putting out even as he tried to hide them under his bravado. The way his steps were shorter, his shoulders were tensed, his jaw was clenched, and a hundred other little things Stiles had come to know about Derek, written there for him to read like a familiar book.

Hating himself for it, Stiles looked away. He couldn’t watch Derek leave like that, but he wanted him gone all the same. Derek stopped next to Stiles looking at him again like he couldn’t move another inch if he didn’t this one last time. Stiles’s fists tightened at his sides as he felt Derek’s gaze heavy on him. He couldn’t move, he didn’t know what to do, he just wanted this over.

Then a hang man’s resolve hardened in Derek’s eyes. Before Stiles could react, Derek had grabbed him and caught his lips roughly in a kiss. Stiles hadn’t realized he’d been holding back tears until that second. They spilled down his face unbidden. He shut his eyes tight to shut them out and grabbed onto Derek for dear life. Derek pulled him in tighter like if he held on tight enough he could crush all the wrongs between them into dust.

There was no finesse to it. They kissed sloppily with a maddening mixture of anger, hunger, and misery. The anger won out for a moment in Stiles and he bit Derek’s lip so hard he tasted blood. They broke apart and Stiles watched for a second with labored breath as Derek’s lip healed of the teeth marks he’d left.

He didn’t want to read Derek’s expression. His hands and lips were both trembling as he ran his fingers over his bottom lip slowly like the touch of his own skin would erase the feeling of Derek there. His tongue darted out of its own volition and he could taste Derek on his lips, he could smell him there on his clothes and his skin, and his whole world was suddenly engulfed by Derek. He shoved his hand into Derek’s chest with all his strength and knocked him back with suddenness of the blow. Derek was forced to sit on the bed as it took his knees out from under him. Derek looked up at Stiles, taken aback.

Stiles shut his eyes and turned away from him as he bit out sharply, “Just stay there!”

He walked agitatedly to the far corner of the room and paced several steps in each direction. He was still refusing to look at Derek even though he could feel his eyes on him like a burning itch on the back of his neck. His thoughts made no coherent sense and he felt feverish, too cold and too hot all at once.

He finally released a frustrated growl from his throat and leaned his arm against the wall and his forehead on that. He tried to just concentrate on his breathing as he fought the emotions all tumbling around in his head. He finally felt something crumble inside him and his whole body went slack against the wall.

He heard the bed creak behind him after a moment as Derek stood slowly. It was a mark of how emotionally drained Stiles was that he didn’t even react as Derek came up behind him and put a strong hand on his shoulder. He squeezed gently and the gesture almost broke Stiles completely. The very last dregs of his anger leached out of him and he took a deep breath before leaning back into Derek’s solid chest behind him.

Derek took his weight with no effort and wrapped his arms around him like it was the most natural gesture in the world. Stiles turned his head into Derek’s shoulder, his eyes closed as he just took Derek in through his other senses. Derek lowered his head softly onto Stiles’s opposite shoulder, breathing softly against the skin of his neck. They stood there like that for a long time, until their breathing became a synchronized motion and their hearts beat at the same tempo.

Stiles finally allowed his eyes to open. They focused dully on the space just above the corner of his history textbook. “I’m sorry too,” he murmured so low that anyone else probably wouldn’t have heard it.

He felt the slight ripple of facial muscle against his skin as Derek smiled fractionally. “It was my fault,” Derek replied softly.

“No, it wasn’t,” Stiles corrected him but they both knew that wasn’t what the words meant.

They didn’t really have the words for it anymore, because those words broke people, killed them. So this was how they forgave each other, how they came back from the edge of broken to belonging again. It wasn’t easy, it wasn’t supposed to be, but this was their ‘I love you’ and it was enough for them.

**Author's Note:**

> What were they fighting about? I don't know, what do you think?
> 
> Also, I didn't look this over before I posted it. Sorry about that.


End file.
